Communist Party China

Premier Zhao Ziyang defended the Chinese Communist Party's purge of dissident members but said in an interview broadcast Sunday that intellectuals are free to voice their opinions outside the party. "I don't think this is a crackdown," Zhao told NBC's Tom Brokaw in a rare interview. It was taped last week and broadcast in the United States on the Sunday program "Meet the Press." Zhao has also been the party's acting general secretary since Hu Yaobang was ousted last winter.

— Political films can be a tough sell in many countries, to say the least. But director Huang Jianxin is confident that he's sitting on a blockbuster with "Beginning of the Great Revival," a historical epic detailing the founding of China's Communist Party. Of course, he's got some advantages that would make almost any other filmmaker green with envy. For starters, his cast includes more than 170 of his country's most famous actors, including Chow Yun-fat, John Woo and Andy Lau, who waived their salaries to take part.

When nine Cal Poly Pomona students wrote to China's top Communist last March seeking an explanation for last year's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, what they expected was a form letter in reply. Instead, they were invited to the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on Friday to receive an extraordinarily detailed, 10-page answer from Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Communist Party in China.

In stark contrast to the prevailing global economic gloom, China celebrated 52 years of Communist rule this week by going on a spending spree. The world's most populous nation splurged on all the things much of the world took for granted until the recent terrorist attacks in the U.S., including jumbo jets and skyscrapers. China is particularly upbeat after recently winning the right to host the 2008 Olympics and clearing final hurdles to join the World Trade Organization.

A renewed power struggle is under way at the top levels of the Communist Party of China, with senior leader Deng Xiaoping trying to strengthen the position of those who advocate market-oriented economic reforms. In the balance is the fate of hard-line Premier Li Peng, whose commitment to reform is often questioned.

A history student from the central Chinese city of Wuhan found himself sinking into deep frustration, even despair, when he visited friends at Beijing University recently. "Everyone in Wuhan feels obstructed, stuck. There is no place to turn," the young man explained in a dormitory conversation. "Writers cannot publish their books. Students cannot publish their essays. I came up to Beijing University to see if anything was going on, if anything was being organized.

Hu Yaobang, second in command to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, resigned Friday as the head of the world's largest Communist party after the party leadership announced that he had confessed to "mistakes on major issues of political principles." The Communist Party said that Premier Zhao Ziyang will become the party's "acting general secretary." No replacement for Zhao was announced Friday, but a selection could be made within the next few days.

Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin vowed that the nation will remain a socialist dictatorship, with no room for capitalism or multi-party democracy. He addressed a meeting in Beijing celebrating the party's 70th birthday. Many Beijing residents, however, were in no celebratory mood, remembering the thousands killed or injured June 3-4, 1989, in pro-democracy protests. Some voiced a subtle message of dissent through T-shirts, some of which read, "I'm depressed, leave me alone."

China's Communist Party has staked its future on economic reform in a triumph for 87-year-old leader Deng Xiaoping over hard-liners devoted to Marxist ideology. In a two-day meeting this week, the party's Politburo vowed to keep policies of reform unchanged for 100 years and said those who put politics first must be stopped, said a report splashed across front pages of major newspapers today.

Acting Premier Li Peng was appointed China's new premier Saturday, and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang of the Communist Party was elected to a state military position commensurate with a party military post that he already held. Election of Li and Zhao to the posts by the National People's Congress nearly completes a transition, begun at a Communist Party congress last fall, to a younger set of leaders in top party and state positions.

Appalled by what they see as a sellout, Communist Party hard-liners have lashed out at Chinese President Jiang Zemin, warning that his recent comments opening the door for capitalists to join the party could lead to its collapse.

As China's leaders speed up a massive anti-corruption drive, it is becoming increasingly clear that they're worried not just about graft draining state coffers or undermining their credibility, but also that corrupt officials will topple the Communist Party from within. "This is a cruel dilemma," says Minxin Pei, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

A previously secret collection of documents released Friday provides the first inside account of the power struggle within China's Communist Party leadership that led up to its bloody 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Over the last several months, China's Communist regime has been engaged in a propaganda campaign reminiscent of the bad old days of the People's Republic, when Marxism ruled and proper political thinking was the primary test of loyalty and fitness. Ideological "study sessions" and indoctrination classes for cadres are back in force. So is harsher treatment of suspected liberal elements, particularly scholars who advocate political reform.

Once, a long time ago, the Chinese Communist Party was made famous as the "Red Star Over China." Now it's become little more than a black cloud. On Tuesday, Lois Wheeler Snow, the widow of American writer Edgar Snow, issued the stunning, poignant declaration that she may no longer be able to leave her husband's ashes on the campus of Beijing University, where they were placed after his death in 1972.

On the day 50 years ago when the People's Republic of China was born, so was Shen Guoqing. She arrived at a propitious moment and in an auspicious house. Her father was a clerk to Madame Soong Ching-ling, the widow of China's nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen. It was Madame Soong, known to all as the "mother of China," who gave Shen her name. As she cradled the baby girl in her arms, Soong declared the girl would be called "Guoqing," which means "celebrate China."

Lei Feng is a most unlikely hero. A military man who died in a ridiculous accident, Lei Feng was a naive do-gooder whose highest goal was to be a "rustless screw" in the great machine of communism. His short life, according to official histories, came to an abrupt end in 1962, when one of his comrades backed a truck into a utility pole. Lei, 22, failed to dodge, and the falling pole killed him. An ignominious end? Not at all.

On the day 50 years ago when the People's Republic of China was born, so was Shen Guoqing. She arrived at a propitious moment and in an auspicious house. Her father was a clerk to Madame Soong Ching-ling, the widow of China's nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen. It was Madame Soong, known to all as the "mother of China," who gave Shen her name. As she cradled the baby girl in her arms, Soong declared the girl would be called "Guoqing," which means "celebrate China."

China's highest Communist official tried for corruption was sentenced to 16 years in prison today, official Chinese media reported. The Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court handed down the verdict against former Beijing Mayor and party boss Chen Xitong in a public session this morning, the official New China News Agency said, although no foreign media were notified of the trial in advance.

World citizen China or world threat China? At the conclusion of a year marked by milestone events--the death of a powerful leader, the repatriation of Hong Kong, a crucial Communist Party meeting and a historic summit in the United States--some diplomats and scholars contend that China is showing signs of a new maturity and engagement in world affairs. "China had a very big year domestically," says a senior Western diplomat here.